Getting rid of white space...

[Marcos Rebelo]

are you speaking of this?

use strict;
while(my $line = <>) {
($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
print($line."_nice/n");
}

-----Original Message-----
From: LoneWolf [mailto:lonewolf@nc.rr.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 3:38 PM
To: [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
Subject: Getting rid of white space...


I have about 12 files that I am pulling for a SCO box to a RedHat box, FTP.
THe files from the SCO box are poorly formatted with extraneous whitespace
(sometimes as much as 30 or more) before and after the text. I need to
parse all of the files I DL and put them into a new file with "_nice" added
at the end.

The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem separating the
fields, I just am not sure how to make it remove all extra whitespace. It
needs to keep all Space in the fields " the description of the
file " should still be readable as "the description of the file"

Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a beginning book
and my old code and have come up nil.

Thanks,
Robert

--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]

[Anthony Akens]

I figured I'd take a stab at fleshing this out into what he wants...
Any comments on things I could do better? I only added to what
Robert had coded...

Tony




#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
my $dirname = "/my/stuff/";
my $file;
my $newfile;
my $line;

opendir (DIR, $dirname) or die "Can't opendir $dirname: $!";
while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {
next if $file =~ /^\.\.?$/;
open (OLDFILE, "< $file");
$newfile = $file . "_nice";
open (NEWFILE, "> $newfile");
while ($line = <OLDFILE>) {
($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
print NEWFILE "$line\n";
}
close OLDFILE;
close NEWFILE;
}


-----Original Message-----
From: [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email] [mailto:Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:32 AM
To: [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email]; [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...


are you speaking of this?

use strict;
while(my $line = <>) {
($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
print($line."_nice/n");
}

-----Original Message-----
From: LoneWolf [mailto:lonewolf@nc.rr.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 3:38 PM
To: [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
Subject: Getting rid of white space...


I have about 12 files that I am pulling for a SCO box to a RedHat box, FTP.
THe files from the SCO box are poorly formatted with extraneous whitespace
(sometimes as much as 30 or more) before and after the text. I need to
parse all of the files I DL and put them into a new file with "_nice" added
at the end.

The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem separating the
fields, I just am not sure how to make it remove all extra whitespace. It
needs to keep all Space in the fields " the description of the
file " should still be readable as "the description of the file"

Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a beginning book
and my old code and have come up nil.

Thanks,
Robert

--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]

--
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[Brian Harnish]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, 04 Sep 2003 06:37:57 -0700, LoneWolf wrote:

> I have about 12 files that I am pulling for a SCO box to a RedHat box, FTP.
> THe files from the SCO box are poorly formatted with extraneous whitespace
> (sometimes as much as 30 or more) before and after the text. I need to
> parse all of the files I DL and put them into a new file with "_nice" added
> at the end.
>
> The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem separating the
> fields, I just am not sure how to make it remove all extra whitespace. It
> needs to keep all Space in the fields " the description of the
> file " should still be readable as "the description of the file"
>
> Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a beginning book
> and my old code and have come up nil.

- From your example it appears that you want to remove all whitespace from
the beginning, and end, and duplicates from inside. You can achieve this
easily:

my $text = ' the description of the file ';
for($text) {
s/^\s+//;
s/\s+$//;
# Perhaps its more effecient to put this next line first?
s/\s+/ /g;
}

Also, check "perldoc -q space".

- Brian
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[Stephen Marshall]

I have a similar problem to this , does anyone have another answer? Don't know if its just me but The

> use strict;
> while(my $line = <>) {
> ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> print($line."_nice/n");
> }

Code doesn't work , and the enhanced version with the fancy file handling doesn't work either "trying to read from a closed filehandle error"

Stephen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Akens, Anthony [mailto:AAkens@egh.org]
> Sent: 04 September 2003 15:55
> To: [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email]; [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email];
> [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...
>
>
> I figured I'd take a stab at fleshing this out into what he
> wants... Any comments on things I could do better? I only
> added to what Robert had coded...
>
> Tony
>
>
>
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
>
> use strict;
> my $dirname = "/my/stuff/";
> my $file;
> my $newfile;
> my $line;
>
> opendir (DIR, $dirname) or die "Can't opendir $dirname: $!";
> while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {
> next if $file =~ /^\.\.?$/;
> open (OLDFILE, "< $file");
> $newfile = $file . "_nice";
> open (NEWFILE, "> $newfile");
> while ($line = <OLDFILE>) {
> ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> print NEWFILE "$line\n";
> }
> close OLDFILE;
> close NEWFILE;
> }
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email]
> [mailto:Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:32 AM
> To: [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email]; [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...
>
>
> are you speaking of this?
>
> use strict;
> while(my $line = <>) {
> ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> print($line."_nice/n");
> }
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: LoneWolf [mailto:lonewolf@nc.rr.com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 3:38 PM
> To: [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> Subject: Getting rid of white space...
>
>
> I have about 12 files that I am pulling for a SCO box to a
> RedHat box, FTP.
> THe files from the SCO box are poorly formatted with
> extraneous whitespace (sometimes as much as 30 or more)
> before and after the text. I need to parse all of the files
> I DL and put them into a new file with "_nice" added at the end.
>
> The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem
> separating the fields, I just am not sure how to make it
> remove all extra whitespace. It
> needs to keep all Space in the fields " the
> description of the
> file " should still be readable as "the description
> of the file"
>
> Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a
> beginning book and my old code and have come up nil.
>
> Thanks,
> Robert
>
> --
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
>
> --
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
>
>
> --
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
>

[Stephen Marshall]

Got it working this way fror the important line, but theres probably a slicker way of doing it.

$line =~ s/(\s)+/ /g;

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marshall, Stephen
> Sent: 04 September 2003 17:07
> To: 'Akens, Anthony'; [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email];
> [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email]; [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...
>
>
> I have a similar problem to this , does anyone have another
> answer? Don't know if its just me but The
>

> > use strict;
> > while(my $line = <>) {
> > ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> > print($line."_nice/n");
> > }

>
> Code doesn't work , and the enhanced version with the fancy
> file handling doesn't work either "trying to read from a
> closed filehandle error"
>
> Stephen
>

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Akens, Anthony [mailto:AAkens@egh.org]
> > Sent: 04 September 2003 15:55
> > To: [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email]; [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email];
> > [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> > Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...
> >
> >
> > I figured I'd take a stab at fleshing this out into what he
> > wants... Any comments on things I could do better? I only
> > added to what Robert had coded...
> >
> > Tony
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> >
> > use strict;
> > my $dirname = "/my/stuff/";
> > my $file;
> > my $newfile;
> > my $line;
> >
> > opendir (DIR, $dirname) or die "Can't opendir $dirname: $!";
> > while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {
> > next if $file =~ /^\.\.?$/;
> > open (OLDFILE, "< $file");
> > $newfile = $file . "_nice";
> > open (NEWFILE, "> $newfile");
> > while ($line = <OLDFILE>) {
> > ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> > print NEWFILE "$line\n";
> > }
> > close OLDFILE;
> > close NEWFILE;
> > }
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email]
> > [mailto:Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:32 AM
> > To: [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email]; [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> > Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...
> >
> >
> > are you speaking of this?
> >
> > use strict;
> > while(my $line = <>) {
> > ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> > print($line."_nice/n");
> > }
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: LoneWolf [mailto:lonewolf@nc.rr.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 3:38 PM
> > To: [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> > Subject: Getting rid of white space...
> >
> >
> > I have about 12 files that I am pulling for a SCO box to a
> > RedHat box, FTP.
> > THe files from the SCO box are poorly formatted with
> > extraneous whitespace (sometimes as much as 30 or more)
> > before and after the text. I need to parse all of the files
> > I DL and put them into a new file with "_nice" added at the end.
> >
> > The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem
> > separating the fields, I just am not sure how to make it
> > remove all extra whitespace. It
> > needs to keep all Space in the fields " the
> > description of the
> > file " should still be readable as "the description
> > of the file"
> >
> > Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a
> > beginning book and my old code and have come up nil.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Robert
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> > For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> > For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
> >
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> > For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
> >

>

[Bob Showalter]

LoneWolf wrote:

> I have about 12 files that I am pulling for a SCO box to a RedHat
> box, FTP. THe files from the SCO box are poorly formatted with
> extraneous whitespace (sometimes as much as 30 or more) before and
> after the text. I need to parse all of the files I DL and put them
> into a new file with "_nice" added at the end.
>
> The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem
> separating the fields, I just am not sure how to make it remove all
> extra whitespace. It needs to keep all Space in the fields "
> the description of the
> file " should still be readable as "the description of the
> file"

It's a little unclear what you're asking for. You say you want to keep all
space in the fields, but your example compresses multiple spaces between
words into single spaces.

Anyway, assuming the following:

1. You have split the fields into an array, say @fields, and
2. You want to remove all leading and trailing whitespace, and
3. You want to compress multiple internal whitespace chars into a single
space

I would do:

s/^\s+//, s/\s+$//, s/\s\s+/ /g for @fields;

The first two regexes are the canonical way to remove leading and trailing
whitespace. The third compresses the internal whitespace.

>
> Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a beginning
> book and my old code and have come up nil.

[Anthony Akens]

Try it like this... I was a slacker and didn't have warnings
in place if it couldn't open the file... Should be able
to just change the "/my/stuff/" to your directory and have it
work, I tested it here, and it seems to go fine. (on an aix
box - maybe I have something in place that doesn't work on
windows or other platforms?)

Tony

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
my $dirname = "/my/stuff/";
my $file;
my $newfile;
my $line;

opendir (DIR, $dirname) or die "Can't opendir $dirname: $!";

while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {
next if $file =~ /^\.\.?$/;
open (OLDFILE, "< $file") or die "Can't open $file: $!";
$newfile = $file . "_nice";
open (NEWFILE, "> $newfile") or die "Can't open $newfile: $!";
while ($line = <OLDFILE>) {
($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
print NEWFILE "$line\n";
}
close OLDFILE;
close NEWFILE;
}

-----Original Message-----
From: Marshall, Stephen [mailto:stephen.marshall@thus.net]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 11:11 AM
To: Marshall, Stephen; Akens, Anthony; 'Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com';
'LoneWolf@nc.rr.com'; 'beginners@perl.org'
Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...


Got it working this way fror the important line, but theres probably a slicker way of doing it.

$line =~ s/(\s)+/ /g;

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marshall, Stephen
> Sent: 04 September 2003 17:07
> To: 'Akens, Anthony'; [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email];
> [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email]; [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...
>
>
> I have a similar problem to this , does anyone have another
> answer? Don't know if its just me but The
>

> > use strict;
> > while(my $line = <>) {
> > ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> > print($line."_nice/n");
> > }

>
> Code doesn't work , and the enhanced version with the fancy
> file handling doesn't work either "trying to read from a
> closed filehandle error"
>
> Stephen
>

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Akens, Anthony [mailto:AAkens@egh.org]
> > Sent: 04 September 2003 15:55
> > To: [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email]; [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email];
> > [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> > Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...
> >
> >
> > I figured I'd take a stab at fleshing this out into what he
> > wants... Any comments on things I could do better? I only
> > added to what Robert had coded...
> >
> > Tony
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> >
> > use strict;
> > my $dirname = "/my/stuff/";
> > my $file;
> > my $newfile;
> > my $line;
> >
> > opendir (DIR, $dirname) or die "Can't opendir $dirname: $!";
> > while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {
> > next if $file =~ /^\.\.?$/;
> > open (OLDFILE, "< $file");
> > $newfile = $file . "_nice";
> > open (NEWFILE, "> $newfile");
> > while ($line = <OLDFILE>) {
> > ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> > print NEWFILE "$line\n";
> > }
> > close OLDFILE;
> > close NEWFILE;
> > }
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email]Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com[/email]
> > [mailto:Marcos.Rebelo@eurocopter.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:32 AM
> > To: [email]LoneWolf@nc.rr.com[/email]; [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> > Subject: RE: Getting rid of white space...
> >
> >
> > are you speaking of this?
> >
> > use strict;
> > while(my $line = <>) {
> > ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> > print($line."_nice/n");
> > }
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: LoneWolf [mailto:lonewolf@nc.rr.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 3:38 PM
> > To: [email]beginners@perl.org[/email]
> > Subject: Getting rid of white space...
> >
> >
> > I have about 12 files that I am pulling for a SCO box to a
> > RedHat box, FTP.
> > THe files from the SCO box are poorly formatted with
> > extraneous whitespace (sometimes as much as 30 or more)
> > before and after the text. I need to parse all of the files
> > I DL and put them into a new file with "_nice" added at the end.
> >
> > The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem
> > separating the fields, I just am not sure how to make it
> > remove all extra whitespace. It
> > needs to keep all Space in the fields " the
> > description of the
> > file " should still be readable as "the description
> > of the file"
> >
> > Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a
> > beginning book and my old code and have come up nil.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Robert
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> > For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> > For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
> >
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email]beginners-unsubscribe@perl.org[/email]
> > For additional commands, e-mail: [email]beginners-help@perl.org[/email]
> >

>

[Alan Perry]

On Thursday, September 04, 2003 11:11, Marshall, Stephen wrote:

>
>Got it working this way fror the important line, but theres probably a

slicker way of doing it.

>
>$line =~ s/(\s)+/ /g;
>

This will work, but may leave an extraneous space at the beginning and/or
end of the line.

This text:

" Test text with lots of extra spaces "

would get changed to:

" Test text with lots of extra spaces "

which may not be what you want.

If you want to eliminate any starting or ending space and trim the rest of
it down to single spaces, I would suggest this:

$line =~ s/\s+/ /g; # the parens you had are not necessary
$line =~ s/^ //; # removes any space from the beginning of the line
$line =~ s/ $//; # removes any space from the end of the line

You could probably get fancier on the statements, but I prefer the
simplicity of three separate statements.

HTH,

Alan

[John W. Krahn]

Lonewolf wrote:

>
> I have about 12 files that I am pulling for a SCO box to a RedHat box, FTP.
> THe files from the SCO box are poorly formatted with extraneous whitespace
> (sometimes as much as 30 or more) before and after the text. I need to
> parse all of the files I DL and put them into a new file with "_nice" added
> at the end.
>
> The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem separating the
> fields, I just am not sure how to make it remove all extra whitespace. It
> needs to keep all Space in the fields " the description of the
> file " should still be readable as "the description of the file"
>
> Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a beginning book
> and my old code and have come up nil.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

( $\, $^I ) = ( $/, '.bak' );

while ( <> ) {
s/^\s+//; # remove space at beginning of line
s/\s+$//; # remove space at end of line
s/\s*\|\s*/|/g; # remove space around pipe separator
print;
if ( eof ) {
close ARGV;
rename $ARGV, "${ARGV}_nice" or warn "Cannot rename $ARGV to ${ARGV}_nice: $!";
}
}

__END__



John
--
use Perl;
program
fulfillment

[R. Joseph Newton]

"Akens, Anthony" wrote:

> > The files are all pipe-delimited, so I don't have a problem separating the
> > fields, I just am not sure how to make it remove all extra whitespace. It
> > needs to keep all Space in the fields " the description of the

>

> > file " should still be readable as "the description of the file"
> >
> > Any help with code examples? I have been looking through a beginning book
> > and my old code and have come up nil.

[Original post repositioned for readability]

> I figured I'd take a stab at fleshing this out into what he wants...
> Any comments on things I could do better? I only added to what
> Robert had coded...
>
> Tony
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
>
> use strict;
> my $dirname = "/my/stuff/";
> my $file;
> my $newfile;
> my $line;
>
> opendir (DIR, $dirname) or die "Can't opendir $dirname: $!";
> while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {
> next if $file =~ /^\.\.?$/;
> open (OLDFILE, "< $file");
> $newfile = $file . "_nice";
> open (NEWFILE, "> $newfile");
> while ($line = <OLDFILE>) {
> ($line) = ($line =~ /^\s*(.*)\s*\n$/);
> print NEWFILE "$line\n";
> }
> close OLDFILE;
> close NEWFILE;
> }

Way too complicated. The specifications are much more simple: "Remove
extraneous whitespace". This does not reuire any capturing parentheses. Deal
only with whitespace:

while (<IN>) {
chomp;
s/^\s*//; #trim start
s/\s*$/; #trim end
s/\s(2,)/ /g; # eliminate extraneous spce in between
print OUT "$_\n";
}

More lines here, but a helluva lot less processing.

Joseph